Plants Killing Zombies?

This is the story of a man that wears a steel pot for a hat, mumbles gibberish, and has zombies invading his garden. Your Job is to use plants to prevent the zombies from… ummm… eating your brains!

If this just seems too extreme for a movie plot, well it probably is. But it’s better suited to one of the best Tower Defense titles that has hit the mobile phone market. We are referring to the game Plants vs Zombies.

Its original release was a PC version by PopCap in 2005, but it made a splash on to the iPhone in 2010, and damn it, it is one of the most addicting things in my life at the moment — next to avocado sandwiches.

Why you ask? Well because there are so many combinations of plants that aid you on your quest of defeating some evil zombie doctor and his robot. Sunflowers are vital in producing mini sundrops, and we know plants need sunlight to engage in photosynthesis, which then make plants grow. So as you can see, the game is not only fun, it’s educational.

Planting these sunflowers and collecting their fruits leads to the ability to “buy” and plant characters like pea shooters, Kernel-pults, cabbage-pults, triple peashooters, cactus, melon-pults, mushrooms, jalapeño bombs, cherry bombs, and the amazing potato mines. Just to name a few.

These plants are quite the arsenal when you have to deal with zombies with buckets on their heads, carrying screen doors. There are also zombies that are floating. zombies that snorkle, zombies that dig underground, zombies on bobsleds, and the crypto zombie aka the Yeti Zombie.

Yeti Zombie is one of my faves and one of the rarest to find.

Now if that wasn’t just enough to keep you busy, the levels challenge you. For example, you start at a garden then you move to the night. When you come across a pool, that means facing swimming zombies before heading to the final stage on the roof of the house.

If you make it here, you are soooo close!

If you’ve ever played any Tower Defense game, you know it’s about strategy. This is exactly what makes this game so addicting. So many combinations of plants depending on the type of zombies you face. Honestly, I have spent too many hours invested in this game and with the challenges and Zen garden they recently added, it is a time vacuum and battery drainer, for sure. But it’s so much fun!!!

Because of the game’s popularity, PopCap has just released a sequel; however, Plants Vs. Zombies 2 is currently available for Android and iOS users.

A few weeks back, I had the honor to attend the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU’s presentation of Making It Up As I Go Along, a documentary about the legendary G.I. Joe creator Larry Hama. After the screening, I was also able to have a one-on-one conversation with Larry and fielded some questions from the audience in attendance.

If you were unable to be at the screening, the APA Institute has posted the whole thing online, and you can see it for yourself after the jump!